Explore Historic Climate Relationships

El Niño and La Niña can cause the "seasonal climate" – the cumulative effects of the weather over a season – to deviate from normal at many places around the globe. The following PSL pages can be used to analyze what happened during past El Niños and La Niñas and provide a guide to what may happen in the future.

Average ENSO Climate Relationships

A number of ENSO events are averaged together over differeing time periods in order to reduce interannual "noise".

Updated! Global/US Seasonal ENSO Related Variables

This tool allows single or comparison plots of seasonal averaged variables in relation to El Niño and La Niña over the US and the globe.
200mb zonal wind during El Nino

New! FEWS NET: Historic ENSO-Related Climate Impacts

Historical temperature/precipitation ENSO probabilities are available for countries associated with the FEWS NET program.
Western Asian precipitation probability during La Nina

How ENSO Events Differ

Not all El Nino and La Nina events are the same and there are other differences in the base state between events. For example, there is a strong trend in surface air temperature and the number and timing of MJO events can vary.

Updated!Selected Variables by month for El Niño/La Niña including composite mean and inter-event standard deviation with many different types of variables.

Global SLP anomaly map for El Nino

Comparisons of Different El Niño and La Niña Events
Animations, plots, and more: These links give an indication of how similar and how different the atmosphere/ocean can be during events.

sst animation screenshot

Seasonal Extremes

ENSO can have impacts not just on average climate biut also on the extremes of seasonal values.

Effects on Seasonal Climate Extremes of Temperature and Precipitation Over the US
("Risk Plots")

Given an El Niño or La Niña condition, what are the odds of getting a warm versus a cold season? A wet versus a dry season?